Beijing received 488,000 overseas tourists in April, up 9 percent from a year earlier, the municipal bureau of statistics said Saturday.

In breakdown, foreign nationals made up 415,000 of the total tourist arrivals, a rise of 9.3 percent from the same period of last year, while tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan numbered 73,000, up 7.2 percent, it said in a statement.

The United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan were the top three sources of the overseas tourists to China.

The number of American tourists soared 24.7 percent to 75,000. But the number of tourists from the Republic of Korea and Japan fell 7.4 percent and 26.4 percent to 47,000 and 37,000, respectively.

According to the bureau, Beijing received 1.43 million overseas tourists in the first four months of the year, an increase of 2.4 percent from a year ago.